Cancer remains a life-threatening disease affecting a steadily increasing number of people overall in the world. Platinum-based chemotherapeutic compounds, including cisplatin, carboplatin and oxaliplatin, have been widely applied for the treatment of different types of cancer in clinical trials for decades. These platinum complexes react in vivo, and they are proposed to bind to DNA and subsequently to cause crosslinking of DNA, which ultimately triggers apoptosis.
Although over 50% of cancer patients have been treated with platinum-based chemotherapeutic compounds, these compounds are associated with severe side effects. In addition, both intrinsic and acquired resistances against these compounds have been observed after the treatment with these compounds which further significantly limits their clinical use.
Thus, there remains a strong need for new and effective compounds suitable for treating cancer with acceptable side effects that can be used either as alternatives or alternatively in addition to common chemotherapeutic compounds such as cisplatin or other anticancer therapies such as radiotherapy and which are effective even if the cancer is or has developed chemoresistance against commonly used chemotherapeutic compounds such as cisplatin.